Opera 7 Final Released

[Brett_Tabke]

Given Opera's trend away from a user's browser, I don't think I will be upgrading.

Direct Download from Opera's partner site:
[opera.online.no...]

Also, I'd like to announce that I have discontinued the long standing Opera Fun section over on SearchEngineWorld.

[strimmerboy]

I think there may be a problem if you install Opera 7 on top of 6 - I did and the browser sucked away all my CPU.

A clean install however, seems just as fast as Opera 6 (streets ahead of IE).
Fast, and vastly more configurable, it is now my default browser.

[dwhite]

I've been a long time user of Opera - mainly thanks to the 'multiple window tab' feature. However, I can't help feeling 7 is slower than 6 (which itself was slower than 5).

However, I guess most people have PCs faster than 266Mhz these days...
Also, Strimmerboy's above post seems interesting, though I did install the program in a seperate folder rather than actually 'overwriting' the files.

Anyone notice in 6/7 how clicking a window tab would take a few moments to show that window? (In 5, it was instantaneous). Reminds me of our new TV when changing channels actually...

[toadhall]

There is a bit of lag here and there. Image rendering is a bit more ragged. I've also noticed the buttons aren't as responsive as in 6, that is I need to give a more positive click to close windows or select menu items.

Not enough of a bother to turn me off entirely however.

T

[werty]

dwhite...i run opera 6 on 3 different computers and i do not experience the lag between windows tabs... i am assuming this is due to your computer, you mention it being 266mhz.

i looked for the system requirements but i could not find them. no real mention of opera 6 on the page anymore, at least for windows

[4eyes]

Welcome to the forums, strimmerboy

Does Opera 7 have a password manager?
(sorry haven't downloaded it yet)

That was my main 'missing feature' with previous versions.

[Mardi_Gras]

It does have a password manager - they call it "The Wand." Not sure why...

[4eyes]

Thanks M_G - I'll go download:)

[Hester]

I keep finding lots of cool new features, such as the User Mode page styles to emulate text browsers, black and white etc. But I also keep finding plenty of bugs, some serious. I have also made a list of several CSS2 tests Opera 7 fails. My overall opinion is that it is still a buggy program, and perhaps wasn't ready for release in this state. When people see my findings, they will not be so full of praise for it.

[Orange_XL]

All my sites depend heavily on CSS, and were made to look exactly the same in IE, Mozilla and Opera (5 and 6).
Now with 7, it has all gone down the drain, since it fails on some basic and nested CSS(2). My page look horrible in OP7, almost to the point were you would want to switch to NS4 (in which they look just as horrible).

I wrote a mail to Opera, since I think it is really bad what they have done. While it may be stable, on the rendering front is very much not finished. Personally, i think this is were they get part of their speed gain from.

[Hester]

I'm lucky - most of my own pages have come out identical. If your code is strict enough, there shouldn't be a problem, unless you're relying on advanced techniques that not all browsers support! :-)

[JimInKS]

I started using Opera with Version 5. Opera 6 has been my primary browser and I am pretty happy with it. I tried Opera 7 b1 but it seemed pretty buggy, b2 was a big improvement, but still buggy, so I stuck with v6.

I've been using the release version of opera 7 or a day now on two Win 2K computers and it seems pretty solid. The new look is growing on me. So far all the sites that I had trouble with in V6 seem to render fine with V7. The one new feature that I really like is "Open requested pop-up windows only". For me, this was about the only feature I really missed in V6.

The other Opera features I can't live without are Mouse Gestures, the way BACK is implemented (Instantly return to previous page), file transfers, and I am really hooked on the status bar that pops up while a page is loading (which includes trasfer RATE so I can tell if a page has stalled or is just loading s l o w l y).

I've tried Netscape 6 and Mozzila. Both still seem bloated, slow, and buggy to me compared to Opera.

The one negative of Opera is the price. I did pay for Opera 6, but don't think I'll pay for the upgrade to 7. I think people would be much more willing to buy opera if the cost were more reasonable (compared to FREE). I think $19 US for a new license and $5 - $10 for an upgrade would be better price points. And, a much more aggresive site license scheme. If I could get a 50 user site license for about $5 per seat I would do it today. As it is, I can stand the opera adds.

I don't know about everyone else, but I don't even see adds anymore. It's to the point many times I have trouble finding a legitimate link on a page because it is TOO big and flashy:)

[mcdave]

I'm still a fan of Opera. I can't say why exactly. Some of it is suspicion of MS, some of it is because Opera is 'made' in the EU. I won't deny there's an element of prejudice there. But I like the tabbed browsing (and I find Opera faster than Mozilla), and the ease of turning off images, javascript, and popups. So far, I still prefer 6, as I find the text browser mode buggy (it renders Flash sometimes).
Opera 7 also issues better warnings on going to secure pages. I use both IE6 and Opera every day, but I *like* Opera more.

[europeforvisitors]

I've been using Opera since version 1.0 or 2.0 (I forget which), and I like it mainly because of:

1) The way it stores bookmarks. (If I'm looking for 10 sites on widgets, I can just have the widgets folder open on my hotlist and save widgets bookmarks to that folder instantly.)

2) The fact that I can have a whole slew of Web sites open within one browser frame and with just one button in my Windows taskbar.

However, I still use Internet Explorer for much of my work, because mostly because text seems to look slightly better in IE.

[bill]

I must say that every newsletter I subscribe to that has mentioned Opera 7 has given it an almost unqualified thumbs up...but reading Brett's comments here and a quick run-through of the Opera forums shows that all is not happy in Opera-ville. It sounds like there are a lot of people griping about the poor quality of this release.

[MetaFunk]

No Upgrade Option? Any decent software should try to look already installed components and give a choice to upgrade or not.

In case of Opera 7 it just did a fresh install :-(

I had to remove it and install over the older version manually.

G

[MetaFunk]

Sadly the upgrade did not work well, it messed up all my settings and started giving spurious errors.

I did like the Rollback feature, which re-instated my Opera 5 without trouble.

The installation programme can sometimes make or break a software. In Opera’s case they did not give much consideration to existing users. I think I’ll stick with 5 for a while. Maybe try 7 again when I have a bit more time.

My 2 cents

G,

[toadhall]

Metafunk,

It doesn't take long to import your bookmarks and contacts, and reset your prefs. You'll get a good look at the new lay of the land in the process. I think it's worth the 5 to 10 minutes.

T

[copongcopong]

I would still go for K-meleon, UNBLOATED gecko-based browser. it does emulate tab browsing.

peace. :)

[Sinner_G]

Anyone experienced trouble with Java applets? I installed Opera 7 with Java and a lot of applets didn't appear at all or were buggy. Uninstalled it and then everything runs w/o problems.

[RZaakir]

I've been using Opera since version 3+ and I like the new release. It has its' share of bugs but they really did a great job on it. The CSS support in Opera 6 was funky in a lot of areas and many of those issues seem to have been hammered out. It an use ridiculous amounts of memory at times but hey, my main browser is Mozilla so that doesn't bother me.

Overall I'm going to stick with Mozilla personally (many wonderful tools for developers as well as XML support to name a couple of reasons) but I have no problems recommending Opera to users who are open to a new web browser.

Oh and this is my first post on what seems to be a very informed and intelligent board. Glad to be here. =o)

[tedster]

RZaakir,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld. I've been using O7 for a while now, and it's really growing on me - enough that I'm leaving O6 behind.

I can see some compromises were made so the average, non-geek consumer will like it. But I managed to turn off enough of the flashy animation to get an interface that doesn't distract me.

I do get a bit unnerved by the progressive rendering of table layouts, which makes the text render and then nudge and adjust about for a while. But it's all so fast anyway that I hate it when I need to use another browser for testing.

All of my javascripts now work. And all the bugs I reported in the beta release were fixed. It a solid browser, but now it can be all tarted up as well, for those who like that kind of thing.

[amznVibe]

Opera 7.01 just posted to fix the discovered security flaws:

[opera.online.no...]

or

ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/701/en/std/ow32enen701.exe

[bill]

I have yet to take the plunge. Maybe this patched version will be the one I try. I've got my O 6.05 tweaked up just the way I like it on all my machines and O 7 seems a bit sticky yet.

Is it possible to run O 7 and earlier versions on the same machine? From the sounds of it you have to do a clean install with O 7 in order to avoid the nasties.

[msr986]

My O7 installed itself in a new directory named Opera7 (make sure it installs in a directory named Opera7, to keep your old version intact). You can run O7 and earlier versions on the same machine. The only installation trouble I have heard about was installing O7 final over O7 beta. This required a clean install.

[bill]

Doing it that way will the O 7 pick up the older O settings at all?

[msr986]

No :(

But I would still install it separately.

[andreasfriedrich]

It keeps crashing while fetching the headers of my 2000+ messages from a local UW imap server :(

I´ve never had those problems with OE6.

Andreas

[toadhall]

amznVibe,

Thanks for the headsup on the fix. Where do you watch for these updates? Couldn't find any notice at opera.com or talk of it in the forums at Opera.

T

[toadhall]

Scrap the last line of message #33 [webmasterworld.com] and replace with:

I could put up with that for a while, but when it started crashing on startup over some trouble with xmlparse.dll, and after wading through the tech forum at Opera and finding no reference then realizing I should be surfing, not beta-testing, I uninstalled and went back to 6.05.

Chalk me up as disappointed. (Been a confirmed O buff since 3.62)

T

[amznVibe]

Opera 7 preview 1 for linux is out [webmasterworld.com...]

[web.opera.com...]

built on a RedHat-6.2 machine using gcc-2.95.3 the static package should work on any distribution